


Just this once

by Sassaphrass



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: But especially to Finnick, Drabble, Gen, Mags is Grandma to her nation, Mentor/Protégé
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4470218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mags tries not to play favourites, after all she's an important figure in the Districts, but Finnick's always been an exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just this once

Mags tries very hard not to play favourites. It wouldn't be fair. She is the unofficial matriarch of an entire district, and not just any district but one of the most complicated and difficult ones.

 

Four straddles every line it can find: sea and shore, rich and poor, career and canon fodder. Unlike the outlying districts where it's all about keeping your head above water or the true Career districts where it's a race to try and be as Capitol as possible in Four it's a tightrope walk.

 

Most of the time there's enough food, sometimes there's even plenty of it for almost everyone. Those years when seafood's out of fashion or the latest fad diet forbids the consumption of flesh. Those years people eat the fish they catch or trade them for garden produce and there's a little less desperation. Fewer children show up to the training sessions. Fewer families gamble with their children's lives for food.

 

But, those years are never allowed to last too long. Snow makes sure of that. But, the people of Four are used to it. It's inevitable that the tide will turn every fisherman knows that.

 

And then they come back. The children who, having paid with their names for food, then come to the victors village and their training centre there.

 

Despite the fact that Mags' forte has never been violence per se it's still to her that the hopeful faces look. Mags who's old and strong and who, most miraculous of all, was born before the Games began.

 

It's true, she was. Not that she remembers the Dark Days or the war. She was a little thing than. She's still a little thing. Petite and, once, beautiful.

 

But they love her here. She was the first from Four to wear the Victor's crown. She started the change. She learned how to play and how to win, which rules you could break and which you never ever should.

 

She has no children of her own (she'd known from the start that would be too dramatic a story line for the Capitol to resist) but she's happy being the kindly Grandmother to the entire district. It's because she likes it that she tries to resist playing favourites.

 

They need to see her as infallible and strong. She knows how victors are often treated in the outlying districts- shunned for their ties to the capitol and the blood on their hands. The last thing she needs is to favour a child only to see them die in the arena.

 

Of course, that's an impossible rule to really enforce. There are always children that shine a little brighter, or are a bit cleverer or kinder than the others and she will send prayers to the God she's not allowed to believe in that it will not be them, that it won't be any of them but really and truly not that one.

 

Eventually her plans bear Victors who take their turns to wear the crowns and train the children. Mags steps back, focuses on her 'talent' and on being a grandmother to the district.

 

It's a foolish delusion but one she clings to.

 

Finnick, of course, breaks through everything.

 

Which is funny, since she doesn't remember the first time she met the boy. Whenever it was he didn't make an impression.

 

Probably hidden among the gaggle of Odairs. A fishing family, claiming to have salt water in their veins and to have been catching fish since before Panem was founded.

 

Her first clear recollection of the boy is during the reaping. He was fourteen years old and looked it. Beautiful, she remembers thinking, surely this is the most beautiful boy in Four, maybe even in all of Panem. But still, he had been every inch the fourteen year old boy. A little bit gangly and a little bit awkward, but he'd smiled like the sun.

 

It had been strange to watch. He acted as though he would win, even though everyone watching knew he was still too young, too little to win.

 

Later on, in the months and years that follow as the Capitol tries and fails to fall out of love with her boy, they'll say it was his beauty. That not even the Capitol had a heart cold enough to look into that face and want him to die.

 

It's the story they tell and most people believe it.

 

But, there have been generations of beautiful children who've died bloody in the arena.

 

No, Finnick was special. They fell in love with his charm and his charisma. He had a certain quality of making anyone and everyone like him. It wasn't something he did on purpose, and it was years after the Games before he learned to turn it on and off, or even realized the effect he could have, but, he'd always been able to charm.

 

Mags was only one of his conquests. But she was a rare case where he was as much under her spell as she was under his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. There should be more fic about these two. POSTING SPREEE!!!


End file.
